teleogenesis

English

Etymology

teleo- +‎ genesis

Noun

teleogenesis (uncountable)

  1. (cybernetics) Autonomous setting of goals
  2. (dated, rare) A regime of controlled, intentional reproduction
    • 1955, Paul Stewart Henshaw, Adaptive Human Fertility‎, page 257:
      […] in the same way that appetite has ensured the intake of food, sexual compulsion has ensured the placement of sperm. Under teleogenesis this would no longer be the case.
  3. (biology, dated, rare) The preferential evolution of features and organs in certain ways
    • 1930, Henry Fairfield Osborn, “The Discovery of Tertiary Man”, in Science‎, volume 71, page 1827:
      Third, to this hundred per cent. structural equipment of our remote ancestors phylogeny adds a hitherto unperceived germinal potentiality of specialization along certain pre-determined directions rather than others in adaptive reactions to changes of environment; this teleogenesis rests upon thousands of observations among primates, horses, titanotheres and elephants which prove that parallel anatomical and psychical progress is traceable to germinal community of origin.

Coordinate terms

See also
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